Orthodontia

Jordan needs orthodontic work. This is not the least bit surprising; both Dale and I had braces and various other devices. Jordan's issues may be exacerbated by thumbsucking or may be just hereditary. Like I did, he has a very high, narrow palate, which is messing with how his top teeth line up with the bottom teeth. In my case the bottom teeth bent inwards to meet the top teeth. In his case, there is a crossbite: some of his back top teeth sit inside his back bottom teeth, instead of outside. This will not do.

We (now) have a terrific pediatric dentist, who recommended an orthodontist, who we saw for the first time this morning. We were impressed! The orthodontist was informative, convincing, a good communicator, and worked well with Jordan. Jordan seemed to enjoy the experience. He was not only very chatty about camp and birthdays and such, but was also completely honest and very articulate about his thumbsucking, not evasive at all. (He told me later that he thinks it's wrong to lie to a doctor. I agree with this.) The office is very organized and efficient, and it's conveniently located, which is helpful because we're going to be there a lot. Jordan likes the movies that play in the waiting room.

Jordan will need a palate expander. I had one of these. Back then they called it a palate "splitter," ouch. Thank god they appear to have improved the thing quite a lot in the past, um, thirty years. The concept is the same: the device sits below the roof of your mouth, and every day you turn a little key to make the device a bit wider, which gradually widens the palate. Mine involved a plastic plate like a retainer, but well below the roof of your mouth, so that it was hard to talk and eat, and food got stuck above it like you can't believe. It was miserable. Now it's just a wire and small screw thingy across the roof of your mouth. It still takes a few days to get used to, but it's significantly less horrible. Jordan will have that in for about six months. This may address the thumbsucking too (because there's a device in the way) or it may not. After the palate expander, he will have a device called a "crib," which is also on the roof of the mouth, and is built to get in the way of thumbsucking. After that, braces on just the front teeth, and after that, retainers. This will all take about 18 months and will line everything up very well. Most often, the adult teeth come in on the tracks established by the baby teeth, so there is a good chance that the corrections needed on his adult teeth will be minor. This is part of the rationale for starting orthodontic work now, rather than waiting until middle school: It's much easier and more stable to correct the shape of the palate now, while the bones are malleable.

I am oddly cheerful about the whole enterprise. It needs doing, we have a good orthodontist, and thank goodness we can afford it. But also it feels like a rite of passage. I must be a grown up, to have a kid that needs braces.

Dragon cake

Jordan draws a lot of dragons, and for his birthday he wanted a dragon cake. When I offered him the chance to draw his own dragon for his own cake, his jaw dropped and he got a faraway look. I cut him out a piece of paper the size of the cake, and had him use fat markers, so that he would draw something I could reproduce in frosting. Here is his selected design. 

Disturbing, isn't it? Dale says it looks a little like the monster in Prometheus. I skipped that movie; I think more of a lamprey-centipede with a mace for a tail.

As usual, I made the cake well in advance and froze it. I learned a new frosting technique from Jess: Instead of slathering frosting all over the thing, which requires a crumb coat, I pipe frosting on in big thick bands with a giant piping tip. I start with the sides.

And then all over the top, first in bands, and then smoothing it with a spreader. This is buttercream; some prefer the shortening kind of frosting because it's better behaved, but we all know it doesn't taste nearly as good. The buttercream behaved quite well for me.

I love to pipe frosting. I find it meditative. I did the white frosting on Saturday night, after Aaron's party, and when I started out I was exhausted, but when I was done, I was refreshed.

The next morning I traced Jordan's dragon with a frosting pen on wax paper. 

Then I pressed the design gently onto the cake, so that the outline stuck to the cake (in reverse). This is pattern transfer, and it's awesome! Went without a hitch.

I made up a batch of dragon-colored frosting. Jordan asked for "a very strong red," and that's hard to achieve with even the best food coloring. I added a little purple to the red, and it came out looking like ... meat. I think it's great. The piping technique is little stars, again learned from Jess.

Here's the final product. It involves one googly eye, many red hots (including the knees!), purchased black frosting for the accents, and fruit leather wings. The 8 is outlined with a gel frosting that I bought in a tube, and filled in with colored sprinkles. To make the yellow-orange flames, I put yellow and orange together in the same piping bag. The candles went into the flame part.

The whole thing was very popular. The kids vied for slices of flame, of 8, and of dragon head. And, most importantly, Jordan was delighted.

Cake pops

I had not planned to make cake pops. I thought about it, but decided it was too fussy. So I made a big chocolate half sheet cake. Then something funny happened while I was baking it; it was taking absolutely forever. After an hour and a half it was still not done. It's a bigger pan than I'm used to, which is perhaps why it took me a while to recognize that at some point instead of turning off the timer, I had turned off the oven. Whoops. I eventually got the cake baked, but of course it was a wreck. Tasty, but a total mess coming out of the pan. 

I couldn't bear to toss out a whole cake, mess though it was. Then I remembered that the first step in making cake pops is to crumble a whole cake into bits. It was meant to be.

The next step is to mix in a big blob of frosting, so that it turns into a thick chocolatey paste, the consistency of cookie dough.

Then you can roll it into small, dense balls of chocolate cake paste. Yum.

I froze the balls for several days. This is what made this whole process doable for me; it can be done in stages, with days or even weeks in between streaks of action. It's a good thing, because the next step turned out to be a doozy. You're supposed to just melt a bunch of white chocolate, dip a lollipop stick into it, poke the stick into a cake ball, and dip the ball in the chocolate to coat it. But the balls sometimes fell off the sticks or broke in two, and the chocolate was too thick, and how did the internet make it look so easy? Even with the diligent assistance of a visiting former pastry chef (thank you, Renee Michelle!) it was a big job. We used three pounds of white chocolate.

Maybe I had too many. But what else was I going to do with all that messed-up cake? Here they are in the freezer... beef above, chicken below.

When we ran out of floral bricks to stand them up in, we made cake-pop truffles instead, and decorated them with sprinkles.

I had my heart set on ninja cake pops because Aaron and his friends are obsessed with ninjas. The night before the party I melted yet more white chocolate (the fourth pound!) and dyed it a sort of a dark sage blue, as though the ninjas were stealing their masks from Eddie Bauer. The first few were a total failure; the blue chocolate didn't stick! It was because of the condensation that formed on the pops when I took them out of the freezer. I had to dry off each pop with a paper towel before dipping it. Then I was able to spoon blue chocolate over the four sides to form something like a ninja mask. (Or ... a small round television set?)

After a couple dozen ninja masks I tried rolling some pops in yellow sugar crystals. Nice, but too subtle.

On a whim I dipped just the very top of a pop into blue chocolate, then dipped the wet blob into brightly colored sprinkles. Love! It looks like funny clown hair!

The last bit was to draw faces with a food pen. Pretty great.

On the morning of the party, I took the pops out of the freezer to thaw. When I checked on them a while later... disaster! Condensation again. It had dripped down all their little faces, erasing their features and smearing their headgear. It looked like they had cried their faces off.

I patted off each sad little face with a paper towel again, and redrew it. It was a piece of stress I didn't relish on the morning of a big party. But it all worked out! Here is the final presentation: ninjas above, clowns below, and truffles to hold the candles.

Big thank you to Jess for the floral bricks and the checkered cloth. The presentation was a big hit! As was the eating.

Jordan's 8th birthday

The day of Jordan's eighth birthday party began in the best possible way: with a trip to the Lego store to redeem the gift certificates from Grandpa. They made out like bandits.

Then it was party time again. There was an entertaining economy of scale to having two birthday parties on one weekend. We had the same bouncy house, the same tasty treats, and the same house beverage for the adults (a light Moscato). The weather was better for Jordan's party; although it rained all morning, it cleared in the afternoon, so after Dale mopped out the bouncy house the eight-year-olds bounced just as much as the five-year-olds had. They discovered that if they worked together, they could make it collapse onto its side... but there were no injuries, no fights, no destruction, and everyone seemed to have a great time, so we're calling it a big win.

The guests were Theo, Evan, Georgie, Watson, and Sam from Wedgwood Elementary, Nathaniel and Amara from the SJCC, and Marco and Benjamin from Temple Beth Am. Here's the crowd taking a watermelon break. For those who did not care to bounce, there was chess.

By the time kids are eight, birthday parties are mainly dropoffs, but we were happy to talk Sara, Micheline, and Angela into spending the afternoon with us. Let it be known that we consider birthday parties to be choice parent occasions, too, and will always put out a good spread!

Jordan had the pleasure of drawing the dragon for his cake. It came out great! He was delighted. Check out how the candles accentuate the dragon fire... Mommy is clever that way.

Aaron and Amara enjoyed each others' company a lot and kept a healthy distance from the big kids.

Jordan opened presents outside. 

I love the cards that eight-year-olds make. Here is a small sample... 

It might help to know that Georgie got Jordan a book called How to Be A Pirate, and Evan and Nathaniel both got him Pokemon stuff. Nathaniel's card shows Jordan beating Nathaniel at Pokemon!

Needless to say, Jordan's Pokemon collection has now substantially increased. There was plenty to support a multi-player whatever-it-is-that-they-do-with-all-this. 

It was a great day, and a heck of a weekend. Happy birthday to Jordan!

Aaron's 5th birthday

This year, like last year, we planned for the boys to each have their own birthday party. And this year, unlike last year, enough friends were in town for two parties! (Sometimes the 4th of July weekend conspires against us.) We decided that the most possible fun would be had by all if we rented a bouncy house. The boys were thrilled. For Aaron, the fun began when it was delivered: He got to help set it up, and even turn it on.

Watching it fill up is pretty awesome.

The minute it was ready he was in there.

When Jordan got back from soccer practice, the two of them bounced and bounced and bounced and bounced. Before the party even started they had bounced for two hours. How do they do it?! Never mind. They loved it.

When the guests arrived they loved it too. We were joined by preschool buddies Emanuel, Amara, Halsey (and her little brother Kinsey), Spencer C, and Spencer M, and they bounced until you would think they would drop. At some point the shirts came off.

Even some brave adults gave it a go. (The shirts stayed on.)

During the (rare) breaks in the bouncing, the kids were totally mellow, perhaps due to exhaustion. Here they are enjoying a Lego Club magazine together.

You can see in the background that the adults were having a lovely parallel party. We had a delightful afternoon with Gabe, Jon and Sara, Steven, Jen, Mandy, and Hunter (with kids, and his friend Ron with his kid). 

There was a pause in the bouncing for cake pops. This was my first time making cake pops and it was laborious, but pretty fun. There are ninjas, clowns, and candle-holders. All were devoured with glee.

I am indebted to Jess for the display... she got me the floral bricks that the cake pops are stuck into, and picked the checkered cloth that makes such a great backdrop. And Renee Michelle dipped many a cake pop.

Aaron had a great day. Happy birthday to our great big five year old!

Summer camp sendoff

Jordan and Aaron started summer camp together this week. Public school is actually still in session, but we gave Jordan the choice to attend a couple days of camp this week… we figured why not, and it definitely helps Aaron to have his big bro on the bus with him. Here they are showing off some of their new gear.

And here they are boarding the big yellow bus, checking in with their "bus captain" Carly. Jordan instructed Aaron to grab a seat in the back because it’s so BUMPY back there. They got a seat together, and waved merrily to us as the bus pulled away. We shared with the other bus stop parents that strange feeling of liberation and yearning you get when your kids take another step away from you.

In the middle of the day I got an entertaining email from Aaron’s camp director. “Aaron requested I email in regards to his water bottle today,” she said. “At lunch he got confused and quite upset thinking Alec’s blue water bottle was his. He is doing great now but wanted me to ask you to make him aware of which water bottle he will have in his lunch.” Poor guy. Aaron used a blue water bottle all through last year at preschool, which must have looked like Alec’s. For camp, he has a very cool new one with anglerfish on it. We did show it to him, but there is so much new, it's got to be a lot to take in. What are you supposed to rely on, when even your water bottle changes?

End of an era

Aaron’s tenure at the Stroum Jewish Community Center Early Childhood School is over. He started there when we moved to Seattle, when he was one year old, meaning he has been going there on weekdays for something like 80% of his life. It’s been a good school for our family; the curriculum is good, the teachers are some good and some great, and the other families are a wonderful bunch of people. When you join a preschool, you are joining a pool of friends for both your children and yourself, and both we and the kids have made some very good friends at the J. A few of these families will be at our neighborhood elementary school or at temple, so we will have a continuing connection to them. For others, we’ve made a schedule of monthly dinners so we can keep in touch.

 I love having big kids. But Jordan doesn’t really fit in my lap anymore, and Aaron still does but barely, and I’m realizing how fast it all goes by. The end of preschool is the end of early childhood. When I cleaned out Aaron’s cubby, there was his naptime blanket, and I thought: The days of naptime blankets are over. The days of playtime in class are over (though at least there is still recess). The days of teachers who know you as a whole person are over – how you nap, what you eat, what your family is like; public school doesn’t support that. The sense of school as a place where you follow your own interests and set your own pace are probably over too (until maybe college?). At his next school, there will be 25 kids in his class, there will be a ton of behavior management, and the district will set the curriculum. It’s the end of an era.

Aaron in the middle is with Halsey and Clementine, in our sukkah. At the bottom is Emanuel, his current best buddy, with Spencer C. On the right side jumping off a board is his other best buddy Finn.